The Night We Met
by Starterletu
Summary: Years after Jack's death, Ennis decides to return to Brokeback and face the ghosts of the night they met.


He continually embraced that shirt, smelling with ardour the weak fragrance that remained there. As he closed his eyes he could feel like Jack's touch, like the blood flowing through his nose and his soul rising as he re-created warm breath on his face once again.

As he returned to bed, he felt his face burning with tears and his chest squeezing in a distressing sensation that he would be able to pull out with his bare hands if he could. He often ran out of the trailer in an attempt to catch his breath and run away from his nightmares. He looked at the stars and cried his nostalgia silently.

His headboard full of pills had become his safe haven. Doped, he fell asleep and repeated the whole process, back to dreams and unattainable reality.

He knew that when he woke up he would be surrounded by his macabre reality, and little by little he felt like a piece of his soul dying.

What if he could come back? What if he could return to the night he met the reason for his pain? What if he could once again grope to Jack's body? Feel like I've never felt the kiss that incited his hidden nature before?

Not even the prayers he now offered in honor of his renewed belief or even the magic of pills were enough to make his pain bearable. He wished to march as in Pentecost to the end of the world in the hope of finding his cheerful part now dead.

His deteriorated appearance denounced his inner death as a sentence to past mistakes. Nothing satisfied his appetite but the hallucinogenic effect of those remedies or the inner silence of the church. He searched for God's action in his life for every penny he deposited in the basket of offerings. He expected a miracle, he expected divine mercy to banish his visions or simply carry his pain away from his sensibility.

In spite of his desperate search for relief, the love for his daughters, grown up, distant, still hung in his scales of indecision. But he had imagined that they would certainly find greater hope in their sons and husbands than in a hollow body which they called their father.

Ennis' torturing will to die was his explosive will to live. To live without limits, without fences. To live with the innocence he had lost the night he felt butterflies in his stomach when he touched Jack.

What if he manipulated his own death? He would leave information that he could have moved far away to an unknown ranch. Maybe they would never find his empty body in the middle of Brokeback Mountain; maybe his body would never be recognized.

Or maybe no one else would miss him the way Jack did, loving him unconditionally. A love above prejudices and questioning taboos.

But he had also learned to love, had learned to be welcoming of others' pain. He felt the greatest compassion for the most deprived. However, as a repentant bandit, he crucified his soul and prayed for salvation from that fire that had set his own sparks.

Like an aimless traveller, he set off back to the ruins of his ancient Olympus. The landscape through the chain of icy mountains looked more like an obscure tunnel that kept the light at its end for everything. He climbed the path that led back to the campsite where Jack and he had truly met each other. He felt like returning to the night they had met.

He set up the tent and stayed inside next to the shirt and bottle of pills, looking at the clear, starry night that tore the horizon. Outside he watched the fire form shadows inside his tent with its orange glow. He stared at the grandeur of that dance of flames and felt it as a hope to light inside his chest. After that night, after that moment, he would be free from the dunes of his endless suffering.

Her eyeball was warmed with the tears that traveled through her face, continuously looking at the light that burned her expectations. He hugged his shirt next to his body one more time and turned the whole bottle, or at least half of it, straight into his throat. He grabbed the bottle of cheap, old whiskey - the same one he took with Jack on the night of the meeting - and moistened the passage for his relief.

He stared at the starry skies through the breach in the tent and gradually visualized the glowing glow of the fire gradually dissipating, taking life away from his paranoid field. His blurred vision could still capture the horizon through the trees and bushes, and with a desperate sense of surprise he also visualized an obscure silhouette crossing the field and walking towards it. The darkness in the distance allied to his compromised perception did not allow the individual's physiognomy to be fully recognized. He thought about acting and shouting for him to leave the place, but it was too late for him to react.

Who could it be? Some forest ranger patrolling the area? Some robber or bandit who wanted his belongings? Millions of theories they went through his mind in ecstasy, and through one last feeling he felt how his plan collapsed like nothing.

But now what would it matter? Everything was already falling apart. Everything was already dead.

Nothing. He saw how the synonym of his life materialized in his full unconscious state. He felt his body in a vital totality and was able to walk slowly towards the bottom of a dark plane.

He heard voices and saw familiar silhouettes in the distance. Filled with a white light they stretched his hand and whispered his name in the huge local echo. He instantly recognized her.

Jack's silhouette, shining and crying out for his name.

\- Ennis...

Desperate and very surprised, he began to run in the direction of the caller. The one who wanted him; and the one who loved him.

\- I'm coming, Jack! I'm going! - He felt his eyes soaking like never before and his footsteps sink every instant he approached the light with his desperate run.

\- Ennis...

\- Jack! - The body so moved away from the proximity of her watering voice and the beating heart in her throat - Jack, please! I love you... I love you!

Your screams echoed through the darkness like a blast radius and like magic you felt the body float at high speed. It was reaching! I knew I could do it! I knew Jack would never leave you!

\- Ennis... - His fingers touched and he saw how the light enveloped his body. He felt like Jack's arm wrapping him in a warm hug.

\- Ennis! - And for the last time he heard his name.

In a natural reaction he woke up with a jump that took him away from whatever was holding his hand. He listened to the commotion of blankets and touches, and even sleepwalking and also disoriented recognized through his almost stuck eyelids the familiar face that haunted his dreams.

Jack Twist. Was that his dream or his ghost?

No, it couldn't be. That was just another dream and sooner or later he would wake up in his tent, doped and very, very far away from Jack.

Or maybe he was already awake...

He looked around his environment and saw in his delirium that he was there. Jack was. Maybe it was an illusion or just a foolish vision that his mind had always preached to him in his moments of need.

Ennis retreated, but felt the intruding body again invade his space and grab onto his face. He threw his arms trying to stop the act, but the hot breath of what was done that Jack had invaded the vicinity of his face.

\- Ennis...

He felt his chest bubbling in tension, liquefying a chain of emotions and indecipherable feelings. He was weakened, afraid and afraid of what that might be.... But it was Jack. And it wouldn't matter if it was just another dream or illusion. He was there, present, materialized as he wished for various seasons of suffering. Without him he felt burning in a frozen hell.

\- Jack? - He whispered and touched his expectations.

\- I'm here, Ennis... I'm here

It took a few words chanted in a soft and protective way for their chains to be broken. A sea of hiccups invaded the tent, evading Ennis' emotions that blossomed like those of a child. Their bodies united in a strong, delusional collision. A farewell hug and also a return hug. A wall of affective nature.

\- I love you! I love you, Jack! I love you, you bastard! - Between choking and hiccups poor Del Mar has debulked into valid tears as of decades - We are together now, I will not leave you. Let's live our lives, let's go to our ranch!

\- Shh... Calm down. Come on, lie down here.

Like the first time, Ennis leaned his wish over Jack's chest that caressed his blond and disheveled hair.

Like the first time, Ennis' hands walked that body with greed. He was hungry for its flesh, its smell, its taste. His in totality.

\- I wanted to live, I wanted to leave you. I wanted to tell myself that I was no longer by my side. But I can't, I can't get anything without you - he whispered hypnotized by the tiled tide that waved his beloved's pupils - it doesn't matter where I am, where we are. I want to go back with you, take me wherever you are, Jack!

\- You can live without me. You must live without me, Ennis.

\- No, I can't, and I can't. I need you, I need your forgiveness. If I had been next door, maybe we would have died together. I killed you! I killed you... - I mumbled between faces and hiccups.

\- Shh... Don't say that. You didn't kill me, on the contrary. You gave life, you made me born again. I love you, Ennis. And I'll be yours, forever yours.

Their bodies overlapped their weights on each other, and there, amidst tears and statements, they could feel each other once again. Between kisses, touches and a passion as burning as the sun.

Ennis felt how his chest was tearing and his visions of what he feared most were dissipating like ashes by the panting breath he shared with Jack. He was there and didn't want to let it go, not like last time. I wanted time to come to a standstill at that moment, forever if possible. I wanted it because I wanted to love Jack again. He wanted to and didn't know why he was joining him. Why had he suffered so much if he had always been there?

I didn't know where he was, when to go back, or even why to go back. That was his reality, his unattainable dream. His utopia of the love he once had.

Like the first time he felt butterflies invade his stomach, and settle down reluctantly against his feeling of guilt, repentance and death. It was like going into a hurricane and not feeling their sharp bursts.

After all, he felt his whole life rewind like on a tape and be ejected out of the player, so that he turned the object over and noticed the blank side. He could finally re-record the memories that his love had filled him. He could hear Jack's voice sounding through simple vibrations, dictating simple statements in his memory.

He was beyond the walls of time, too far from his notion to distinguish his relationship with past, present and future. That night was too memorable for her past; acclaimed as never before for her present; eternally desirable for her future.

She was back on the night they met.

\- No promises are needed to prove that you love me. And you don't need that shirt to feel that I'm by your side. I will always love you as no one has ever loved you, and I will walk beside you as no one has ever walked before.

\- Jack, tell me this is not a dream. That everything is real and that I'm awake and not hallucinating-I was begging fervently without letting go of your eyes from Jack's for a single moment.

\- You've always been awake, Ennis. This is not a dream, let alone a hallucination. It's your reality. Just open your eyes and see.

\- I love you, Jack Twist - He repeated among another wet kiss that sealed the demonstration of his misunderstood love for himself.

\- I love you, Ennis Del Mar.

He continually embraced that shirt, smelling with ardour the weak fragrance that was still there. As he closed his eyes he could feel like Jack's touch, like the blood flowing through his nose and his soul rising as he re-created warm breath on his face once again.

As he returned to bed he felt his face burning with tears and his chest squeezing with a longing sensation that he would be able to hold in his own hands if he could. He often ran out of the trailer, trying to recover his memories and run away from his demons. He looked at the stars and wept at their nostalgia silently.

He remembered with a smile the night they met.

  
  



End file.
